In my own writing, I avoid 'female' and try to say 'woman' because I feel that the word 'female' has connotations of not just biology but also non-human mammals. The idea of 'female' to me is more appropriate for a female animal.
From Deborah Tannen
My job is to analyze conversations and discover why communications fail.
'Right' and 'wrong' aren't words a linguist uses.
I've long believed that if you understand how conversational styles work, you can make adjustments in conversations to get what you want in your relationships.
I can't tell you how many times I heard from younger sisters that their older sisters were bossy and judgmental.
There's the bond of a connection and the bond of bondage... When you are connected to somebody, everything each one does affects the other, and it's a kind of bondage. You're not as free as you would be if that person wasn't in your life.
Our ways of relating to each other become like habits.
For girls and women, talk is the glue that holds a relationship together - and the explosive that can blow it apart. That's why you can think you're having a perfectly amiable chat, then suddenly find yourself wounded by the shrapnel from an exploded conversation.
Where the daughter sees power, the mother feels powerless. Daughters and mothers, I found, both overestimate the other's power - and underestimate their own.
I'm a linguist. I study how people talk to each other and how the ways we talk affect our relationships.
6 perspectives
5 perspectives
1 perspectives